by Fünchkins
Dean Patman from Hove, Sussex, creates little animal sculptures from found objects. He has always been fascinated with animals, drawing or modelling them, or hunting them as a child in the back garden. While Dean was at St Martins in 1998, he was involved in a once off project using recycled objects to create animal sculptures which set him on his current course of creativity.
Paul Santal, an illustrator from St. Paul, Minnesota, decided to paint therapy dog, Lucy the Golden Retriever’s portrait to chronicle her journey from being a rescue dog, this decision started the 2013 Rescued Heroes Calender.
This is great way to get rid of those plastic animal that every child seems to collect. They might be gathered from all corners of your little darling’s world, but they all end up in the toy box.
The idea here is to cut the plastic toys, paint them and attach them to either bits of wood painted the same colour or to attach them directly to your wall where they can be used to hang hats and coats.
* Mike from Blue Velvet Chair has all sorts of ways to re-purpose discarded toys on her blog
Minakani has a wallpaper range that is out of this world, the images are giant and fun enough for kiddies’ bedroooms but modern enough to grow with them. The wallpaper would even be fitting for an accent wall in a lounge or kitchen. In some of the designs, you can even pick your own colours!
Minakani wallpaper is available for order through the Minakani website
British mixed media artist, David Mach has sculpted with weird and wonderful objects and in 1982, he made his first sculpture from coloured match heads, which promptly and accidentally caught alight.
But since that first foray, he has made numerous other match head sculptures of everything from the Devil, to African Tribal mask, animals and cartoon characters like Betty Boop. Match head sculptures would be so fun to get a hold of, given my fascination with fire.
In 1999, David Mach was made a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Arts as well as having been awarded several honorary titles through his artistic career, he has also sold and displayed his work all over the world.
Here is a handy little gadget to save your counter tops from awful messes from your utensils, this is one of the small kitchen devices that look totally useless, but then once you start using it, it becomes indispensable. The pot clips, which are pig and chicken shaped, and are made of heat resistant silicone, slip onto the rim of your pot, while the spoon or ladle you are using at the time, slots into what looks like the animals’ mouth, allowing any sauce to drip back into the pot as opposed to your lovely clean counter tops. Then all you need do is fight over who gets to lick the spoon when you are finished cooking.
